2011 began with a bang, or, rather, lots of bangs as New Year's revelers set off fireworks that flushed thousands of blackbirds and sent them colliding into houses, cars and each other. The discombobulated birds plummeted to their deaths in a town that shares the governor's last name, ruffling the feathers of many a conspiracy theorist.

"If you are a bird, even if (your) last name is Bird, I would definitely think about avoiding Beebe for a while," one Arkansas clothing website said, advertising a shirt depicting a yellow bird with X's instead of eyes, for $11.99.

Red-winged blackbirds rained down on rooftops, sidewalks, streets and fields. One struck a woman walking her dog. Another hit a police cruiser.

"I turn and look across my yard and there's all these lumps," Shane Roberts said. He thought hail was falling until he saw a dazed blackbird, stumbling like a drunken partier underneath his truck. A few blocks away and hours later, one of his neighbors kicked off 2011 by filling five-gallon buckets with dead birds.

The blackbird die-off, coupled with tens of thousands of dead drum fish that washed up on the shores of the Arkansas River, produced a plethora of doomsday puns that crept into the national headlines.

"Aflockalypse" and "apocafish" found their way onto a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, where Andy Samberg dressed as Cameron the red-winged blackbird.

"I've considered many theories, you know, fireworks or power lines, but only one makes sense: it's the end of days for birds," he said.

Cable networks, meanwhile, called on pundits and celebrities, including Kirk Cameron of "Growing Pains" fame, to weigh in on why the birds fell from the sky.

Geese in North Little Rock fared a little better in 2011. A park ranger wanted the birds, which she said defecate up to 92 times a day, to get off the golf course and soccer fields of Burns Park and into the bellies of Arkansas' hungriest residents. But a week before hunters were set to shoot more than 100 of the geese, the mayor intervened, calling off the hunt. The birds could end up on the dinner table next year, if Mayor Patrick Hays reschedules the hunt in January.

In Yellville, onlookers searching the skies at the Turkey Trot spotted nary a falling wild turkey. Over the years, sending turkeys sailing from low-flying airplanes had become something of a tradition in the northern Arkansas town. But animal rights activists viewed it as a far more sinister act. So, this year, they put up $5,000 for info that would lead to the arrest of a turkey-dropping pilot.

The skies were turkey-free throughout the festival. There weren't any reports of arrests either, perhaps because a number of festivalgoers wore T-shirts that proclaimed, "I am the Phantom Pilot."

Birds weren't the only thing to make the news from the sky this year.

Steven Lynn wanted to capture aerial photos of his home during his first plane ride over Bay, Ark. Instead, he caught two men burglarizing it.

"I looked down, and sure enough, there was a truck hooked onto a trailer, and guys were loading stuff up," he told The Jonesboro Sun. "It didn't seem to faze them that we were buzzing over in an airplane; we got down pretty low."

Lynn called 911 and told officers on the ground where the burglars were headed.

"They were giving us turn-by-turn directions and giving us a description of the country road," Craighead County Sheriff's deputy Phillip Wheaton told television station KAIT.

Elsewhere on the ground, a state lawmaker tried to take on distracted walkers, proposing a bill that would have barred pedestrians, runners and cyclists from wearing headphones in both ears. An earbud in one ear would have been just fine.

"You might not get the full effect of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with one ear, but you at least will be aware of your surroundings," Sen. Jimmy Jeffress said.

Jeffress, a Crossett Democrat, quickly dropped the bill, giving iPod-toting runners and walkers a chance to enjoy their tunes in both ears.

Another state lawmaker left headphones alone and took aim at the state's moniker instead.

Rep. David Sanders said Arkansas would sound sweeter to outsiders if it were known by a different name: the Land of Opportunity. Gov. Mike Beebe and a number of his colleagues disagreed.